CASEY
I hear Dylan in the shower before dawn, and I get up and turn on the light, check myself in the mirror. I look like someone who slept in a ditch, and I don’t have makeup or anything to make me look better. Bruises from branches as I ran through the woods have browned on my face and my arms. My wrists are still sore and swollen, and my knee aches.
I make a pot of coffee, then turn on the TV and wait for the news. I don’t know if Keegan has reported my escape yet, or if he’s killed someone and tried to set me up . . . At least he didn’t have any of my possessions to leave at the scene, so maybe he didn’t. He could have gotten my blood off the seat, but that would take too long for them to identify forensically, so it might not be an immediate way to frame me.
Dylan comes out of the shower as I pour a cup of coffee. “Hey,” he says with a smile.
I hand him the cup. “Did you sleep at all?”
“A little. But I did a lot of thinking. I’ve got a plan.”
“What?”
“We should leave now, before it’s daylight, while we still have cover of darkness. Then we need to call your attorney.”
“Barbero?”
“Yes. I called him last night, but when I found you, I forgot to circle back to him. He was going to try to get you out of Keegan’s hands.”
“Too late.”
“How’d you choose that guy? He’s not even a criminal attorney.”
“I work for him as Liana Winters.” I tell him about my slightly unethical job. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Well, maybe he can help us until we can get somewhere else.”
We get back into the car, and he has me get into the back seat instead of the front, so I can hide more easily. He drives us to an all-night drugstore. When he comes out, he tosses me a bag. Inside is one burner phone.
“I thought you were getting three,” I say.
“Not all in one place.”
While I stay hidden in the back seat, he goes into two more stores and gets more burner phones. We activate them with the minutes he’s bought with them.
With one of them, he calls Dex. “Hey, buddy. Sorry to wake you.”
I hear Dex’s sleepy bass voice, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.
“Listen, I need to find a safe place. A house or deer camp or something off the beaten path.”
Dex has come through for us before. He’s the one who stitched up my shoulder after my gunshot wound and took Dylan in after he was burned in the apartment fire.
I hear him telling Dylan something, and Dylan writes it down. “You sure the key is there? Nobody’s staying there right now?”
Dylan thanks him profusely and hangs up. He glances at me in the back seat. “His in-laws have a lake house in Little Rock.”
“Arkansas?”
“Yeah. It’s not that far from here. Sounds perfect. I can get you there in a couple of hours, then I’ll go down to Shreveport and pay a visit to the DA. I’ll explain the whole case. I’ll leave you this car and get a flight down to Shreveport.”
“Dylan, I’m scared for you.”
“It’ll be fine. By the time you turn yourself in, I want to make sure we’ve gotten the story out there.”
He disposes of the phone he used for Dex, then heads west.